Hello! This blog is about my daughter Hailey (currently 12 years old) and her experiences living with auditory processing disorder. Auditory Processing Disorder is Hailey's primary issue, however she has also been given the labels Sensory Processing Disorder, Dyslexia, Visual Processing Disorder, Mixed Expressive Receptive Language Disorder and Phonology Disorder at various points in her life.

Friday, November 23, 2012

My Attempt at an Introduction to Homeschooling

(((WARNING: THIS IS VERY LONG! I'm sorry, I just didn't know how else to get it out there.)))

As I sit and start to write about homeschooling, I
feel overwhelmed with all the information I would like to impart and the
daunting task of trying to make it understandable. You see, there are so many, many different
options when it comes to homeschooling your child.

Schools are designed with a particular curriculum
that forces what exactly should be learned, how long it should take to learn
it, when it should be introduced, when it should be mastered, how it should be
presented, how it should be tested, etc.
When you homeschool, you get to make these decisions for your
child.

If you start reading about the philosophy of
education, the history of education, child psychology and child development,
you will find that there are really so many different opinions and attitudes on
educating children. Therefore, there are
also a multitude of methods. As a
parent, you have so many options, you have to try to figure out what you think
fits your philosophy, your style, and of course, the needs and style of
learning for your child.

That being said, I have listed some links to various
common homeschooling approaches at the bottom of this article for you to peruse
at your leisure. But remember, you can
choose to do one in entirety, to pick and choose what you like from each, or to
do something completely different altogether.
Governments do have requirements and they differ depending on where you
live, but most homeschoolers have found it possible to do what they believe is
best while still meeting the requirements of their particular government.

SOCIAL STUDIES, SCIENCE, AND BASICALLY LEARNING
ABOUT THINGS:

For my family, we have taken an eclectic approach (that
relies heavily on unschooling) with me encouraging learning different topics by
showing an interest in them myself and providing the materials for study. For example, when I wanted to explore the
solar system, I started with a video on the solar system. I invited my children to watch it with me and
they did. As we watched it, I expressed
my enthusiasm, asked questions, and listened to them. Then we went to the library and checked out
some books on the solar system. We
looked through the pictures and read some of the books. We acted out scenarios of what it would be
like if someday people moved to a new planet in space. We made lego spaceships, my daughter painted a mural of a spaceship, my youngest son used his allowance to buy some little astronauts to play with. We talked about what people used to believe
when they believed the Earth was the center of the Universe and even when they
thought it was flat! A few days later,
we went to our local science museum and watched a movie about some kids
exploring the solar system in a cardboard box.
Then we went to the planetarium and saw the stars. Eventually, I came home with Styrofoam balls,
wire, and paints. I had bought specific
size balls to match the various sizes of the planets and so we had to look up
in our books which ball should be which planets. Then we looked at pictures of the planets and
painted them appropriately. Then we
labeled them and even put some of the moons around them on toothpicks. Finally, we created a giant solar
system in the order from our sun and hung it from the ceiling in my sons’
room. None of this was coerced or forced
on the children in any way. They could
either participate or not, and like most children, they all eventually
participated in every activity. In fact,
they loved it! As a family, we were all
essentially playing and learning together.
Now my children look back through our scrapbook of that time period and
recall with pleasure the time we studied the solar system.

So this way of learning about things can be used for
almost anything. We’ve studied so many,
many different things this way like Ancient Rome – which was tons of fun – and
bugs, one that I as Momma did not enjoy as much because I personally do not
care for holding and caring for bugs, but my children found immensely
enjoyable.

As the children have gotten older, they have also
discovered their own particular interests to study such as my boys’ love of
weaponry and war strategy throughout the ages and my daughter’s desire to study
origami and life drawing. As Mom, I help
them by helping them find resources such as books, documentaries, museums,
classes, specialists, etc. I also listen to them which is a greatly overlooked
tool for encouraging learning! I listen
to them tell me about all they have learned and all they are interested
in. I ask them questions and show
interest in their interests. You would
be amazed at how much this simple task of truly listening to them helps them to
express their interest, knowledge, questions, excitement, etc. about any topic. And of course I still play with them, make art with them, and let them teach me things they have learned how to do.

READING, WRITING, MATHEMATICS AND OTHER SKILLS:

So if you are unfamiliar with the concept labeled
unschooling, you are probably wondering by now about the “hard academics” like
reading, writing, and mathematics. Well,
these for us have strayed between unschooling, eclectic schooling, Waldorf and
Montessori thinking, and traditional methods.
Being a public school teacher in my past, I was completely familiar with
the “how tos” of teaching reading, writing, and mathematics. So I have used those methods, but
incorporated the non-coercion of unschooling, the wait for readiness of Waldorf
and Montessori, and the be creative and flexible of eclectic.

(I fully plan on going into detail on teaching
reading, writing, and mathematics to my child with auditory processing disorder
in another post, but I wanted to introduce these basic concepts of our homeschooling first.)

READING:

My children have all learned to read, write, and do
mathematics at their own pace and schedule.
For instance, my oldest son learned how to read basic three letter words
and easy reader type reading about age 7.
He didn’t care to learn more than that at that time and really relied a
lot on sight reading as he had a fantastic memory. However, by age 9 he realized that he needed
help, because he couldn’t memorize every word and he wanted to read harder
materials. So, he spent one summer
learning phonics in intensity. I used
phonetic based readers that built upon one another and phonics workbooks to
teach him all those little rules to letter combinations such as vowel digraphs
and syllabication. He learned it easily
and quickly, becoming an expert reader (i.e. what would be considered “grade
level”) by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, during the time period he was not a strong reader himself, I read to
him. We would cuddle together and I
would read whatever books he wanted me to read to him. Sometimes, he would memorize a book just from
listening to it and be able to read it back to me, even though he wasn’t truly
reading – just repeating a familiar story.
This is okay, though, because it builds pre-reading skills such as book
knowledge, story structure familiarity, grammar and language usage, and most
importantly, develops a love of books and reading.

(I still read to them sometimes and they read to me
sometimes.It is a nice way to connect
with each other and have some one-on-one time.)

WRITING:

This same approach to teaching reading can also be
used for writing. My children write when
they are interested in writing and I help them learn spelling, grammar,
punctuation, etc. as they have a need for it.
I also encourage writing by modeling it and sharing my writing with them
or asking them if they would like to write a story with me. I have also scribed for them many, many times
before they could write well themselves.
By scribing for them (writing what they dictate to me), they get to
concentrate on the creativity or message of their writing while I worry about
those details like spelling and punctuation.
I do not correct their grammar as I encourage them to do that when we
read back through what they have written and decide together if something
sounds right or not. As their spelling
and writing skills have developed more, they start writing their own things
without the need for me to scribe. (Longer pieces I still scribe if they desire me
to.)

Of course, I know a lot about writing. So I utilize all that I know to help them as
they are interested and as they are ready for the new information or
skill. For example, they may
scribe/write a story. Then we may read
over it together and decide if it sounds good or not: does it make sense, is
their some conflict to be resolved, does it get resolved, is the setting
clearly present, do the characters seem real, do they change in the story,
etc. This is all done age appropriately
and according to that child’s level of understanding making sure to not be
overwhelming. It should express my
interest in their story and be something they want to discuss and develop, not
a chore or me being critical in any way.
Sometimes the child will want to “make better” parts of the story and sometimes
not. I am always flexible and regard the
story as their creative work and therefore they get to make all decisions on
it.

MATHEMATICS:

We have played with numbers and mathematical
concepts always.We play games that encourage
mathematical skills such as “Shut the Box”, “Yahtzee”, “Chess”, “Spectrangle”,
“Dominoes”, and “Sorry”.We played with
tangrams, unifix cubes, geoboards, geo-solids, fraction bars, pattern blocks,
scales, tape measurers, and every other kind of math manipulative we could get
our hands on or create.We read books
about mathematical concepts like “Measuring Penny”, “Math Curse”, “The Doorbell
Rang”, Sir Cumference and the Isle of Immeter”.We watched television shows that incorporate mathematics like
“Cyberchase”.There are even some
documentaries on mathematics and the history of numbers such as “The Story of 1".

We also use math workbooks. Each of my children has asked to “do math”
like their school friends do from time to time. (My daughter actually really
loves to work in math workbooks and does it all the time.) During these times, I teach them the
specifics of doing mathematical computations on paper. Because they already have the concepts due to
our games and playtimes and movies and talks and real life experiences with mathematics, the paper and pencil computations are about the specifics of how
to do it on paper. This makes it much
easier to do them as the concepts are already understood.

One example of how this works is the fact that my
son wants to be a doctor, or at least he thinks he does at this point in his
life. He learned that doctors need to be
good at math and science so he decided he needed to “do more math”. So he and I spent time working in math
workbooks. He found the work easy to do and
mastered multiple digit multiplication, adding and subtracting fractions, and comparing decimals in two weeks. (He already knew the concepts and could
multiply and divide in his head, as well as had done addition, subtraction,
basic multiplication, identifying fractions, and comparing numerals, among
other things, previously in workbooks.)
Then he decided to take a break and didn’t do any mathematical
computations on paper for a few months, although he continued to do them in his
head to play games and figure things out he needed.

EVERYDAY LIVING BUILDS ACADEMIC SKILLS AND MORE:

Reading, writing, and mathematics skills are learned
and practiced through everyday living on top of being explicitly taught in our
household.

My children spend time every day reading books,
magazines, computer games, emails, etc.
They also build reading skills by watching movies; movies have similar
concepts to written stories like characters, settings, plot development,
conflict and resolution, protagonists, antagonists, etc. We can watch movies and practice skills such
as making predictions, analyzing characters, making connections to our own
lives and other stories whether they be written in books or portrayed on a
screen. We have discussions and
conversations to practice our use of language, build our vocabulary, develop
skills in persuasion, compare and contrast, analogies, etc. These everyday things all assist in
developing their reading and writing skills.

They also write e-mails and to chat in their on-line
games as well. (As they have gotten older, they have also become quite adept at researching on the internet.)

Mathematics is used in cooking, baking, planning,
shopping, reading a calendar, reading a clock, predicting time, playing
strategy games, reading maps, building things with wood or legos or anything
else, making art, keeping a bank account ledger (yes they have their own
notebooks to keep track of their allowance and expenditures), calculating tips,
comparing prices, understanding interest on their personal loans from Mom, etc.

(When we need paper and pencil to help figure out
problems or to visualize them, I teach that skill at the time it is needed as
well.)

BUT THERE IS SO MUCH MORE:

Wow, I have written so very little and yet I am over 2000 words! I haven’t even spoken about
social skills, life skills, physical education, character development as in my
children’s character, dealing with life, keeping a positive self-esteem and
outlook on life, using co-operatives and homeschooling social groups, and more. I believe
that homeschooling is something that one can always learn more about, develop
into one’s own path and art form, change and alter, and continually build
upon. It is something simple and complex
all at the same time. I hope I have not
scared anyone away and in fact have inspired you to think it is a wonderful new
world you are excited to learn more about.

(Those details on specifically teaching to my
daughter with auditory processing disorder will come soon, I promise. Being that she does have some special needs
for learning, there are things we have done and do that are extremely helpful.)